Internal Working Model, Liela Moss, LP

After the haunting My Name Is Safe in Your Mouth (2018) and the dramatic, synth-loaded Who the Power (2020), Internal Working Model bristles with frustration at our disconnected culture but also - crucially - burns with a desire to reconnect: "We see the beneficiaries of the status quo suppress realness and wellbeing by selling you a banal alternative that upholds their agenda. I want to add to the firepower to burn that old house down." A sense of controlled urgency emerges, fueled by the force of Moss's questioning insights. In part, it's an album about selfhood and certainties unsettled in today's dystopian theater, somewhat by the pandemic but also, says Moss, by the "self-seeking, self-protecting culture" of global economics where we have forgotten that "competition is just a construct, co-operation is actually the natural way of being... Lyrically, I'm laughing and yelling at surveillance capitalism, I'm throwing down sentences that reach out to simply feel good on good terrain, to feel safe on planet earth. There is turbulence, but an understanding that the urge to restructure is growing; human goodness cannot truly be suppressed."